1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the transmission of e-mails and the management of e-mail traffic such that e-mails are not transmitted from sender's server to recipient's server unless the recipient has the capacity to receive the e-mail.
2. Description of Background
The transmission of e-mail is well known in the art. It is also well known in the art that an e-mail can have attachments that can be sizeable. In the conventional method of e-mail transmission, shown in FIG. 1, a sender addresses 10 an e-mail to certain recipients and the sender's server distributes 11 copies of the e-mail to the servers associated with each recipient. In the conventional method, each recipient's server checks 12 the quota space for its respective client. If distributing the e-mail and any attachments to the client's inbox would cause the inbox to exceed its quota, the recipient's server does not send the e-mail to the recipient's inbox. Instead, the recipient's server sends 13 a message such as “Mail Router Delivery Failure Report” or an equivalent message along with the original e-mail and attachment back to the sender's server. Otherwise, the recipient's server sends 14 the e-mail to the client's inbox.
As can be seen from FIG. 1, this method generates a substantial amount of traffic in both directions between the sender and client's server. The message that cannot be delivered is sent 11 from the sender's server to the intended recipient's server and sent 13 back again.
The conventional method creates excessive traffic between e-mail servers. This traffic causes a burden on the system and waste of resources that can be avoided.